Jim--
Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was you or Frank with the air/raft (see below)
thing, but I knew you were involved, and it's too easy to say "Frank
said," and I wanted that thread of the historical record to include your
involvement. I do think it was you who added the thought, "it makes animal
encounter tables useless," which is why I awarded the topic to you. :-)
I note that you make a point of using the ORIGINAL, CLASSIC, CANONICAL
formulation "air/raft." I deliberately did not, in order to dispense with
the dissonance of always thinking, "why air SLASH raft?" every time I
wrote it. Do you use it out of a sense of purity/faithfulness to source
(which I admire), because you understand why it uses the slash (some
styles, often British, use the slash instead of the hyphen), or perhaps
because you know of the original antecedent (say, E.C. Tubb or another
original Traveller source, but Tubb, being British, might use the slash).
Detail is the key to everything--which is why I made the point of saying
"Glenn Goffin and Jim Kundert" instead of just "Frank said"--and
"air/raft" is one that I never found/made the time to run down.
> I started that line of thought with "just getting some PCs out of the ship
> is a challenge," but I thought Frank was the source of the Air/Raft line.
> We have all experienced the phenomenon, I suspect, and at this point I
> tend to adopt either a Zen approach ("it is not the destination, but the
> journey that matters") or a Muppets/Indiana Jones approach ("How did you
> get here so fast?" "Oh, we traveled by Map.") depending on group.
> Air/Rafts tend to encourage the second method, of course, but you can
> occasionally get good mileage out of depriving PCs of their ride. Too
> often and you generate your own cliches, though.
>
> ---In , <dcndcn13@...> wrote :
>
> (Frank and I and Glenn Goffin and Jim Kundert were discussing this at this
> last Celesticon, and I think it was Jim who pointed out, "Starships, hell,
> it's worse than that. With air rafts the players just fly over everything,
> what's the good of animal encounter tables?")
>
Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was you or Frank with the air/raft (see below)
thing, but I knew you were involved, and it's too easy to say "Frank
said," and I wanted that thread of the historical record to include your
involvement. I do think it was you who added the thought, "it makes animal
encounter tables useless," which is why I awarded the topic to you. :-)
I note that you make a point of using the ORIGINAL, CLASSIC, CANONICAL
formulation "air/raft." I deliberately did not, in order to dispense with
the dissonance of always thinking, "why air SLASH raft?" every time I
wrote it. Do you use it out of a sense of purity/faithfulness to source
(which I admire), because you understand why it uses the slash (some
styles, often British, use the slash instead of the hyphen), or perhaps
because you know of the original antecedent (say, E.C. Tubb or another
original Traveller source, but Tubb, being British, might use the slash).
Detail is the key to everything--which is why I made the point of saying
"Glenn Goffin and Jim Kundert" instead of just "Frank said"--and
"air/raft" is one that I never found/made the time to run down.
> I started that line of thought with "just getting some PCs out of the ship
> is a challenge," but I thought Frank was the source of the Air/Raft line.
> We have all experienced the phenomenon, I suspect, and at this point I
> tend to adopt either a Zen approach ("it is not the destination, but the
> journey that matters") or a Muppets/Indiana Jones approach ("How did you
> get here so fast?" "Oh, we traveled by Map.") depending on group.
> Air/Rafts tend to encourage the second method, of course, but you can
> occasionally get good mileage out of depriving PCs of their ride. Too
> often and you generate your own cliches, though.
>
> ---In , <dcndcn13@...> wrote :
>
> (Frank and I and Glenn Goffin and Jim Kundert were discussing this at this
> last Celesticon, and I think it was Jim who pointed out, "Starships, hell,
> it's worse than that. With air rafts the players just fly over everything,
> what's the good of animal encounter tables?")
>